Maths in the Victorian Classroom

Age 7 to 14

Article by Jill Howard

Published February 2011.

Learning about maths today can be an exciting, colourful and
rewarding experience, particularly if you explore the NRICH
website! A hundred and fifty years ago life was very different for
the majority of children. Not everyone went to school, and those
who were lucky enough to get an education had to learn things the
hard way. We decided to find out what it would have been like to
learn maths at school in the Victorian period. So, we went to visit
a school where you can still see classrooms that were designed and
built in the 19th century, and experience a day in the life of a
Victorian child.

The British School in Hitchin first opened in 1810. It was opened
by a local solicitor who believed that the best way to help the
children of the poor was to give them an education. At the time
this was quite a controversial point of view - many people thought
that to educate poor people would give them ideas above their
station and would be a complete waste of time. We take it for
granted now, but in those days an education was a mark of status
and self-improvement and something that people had to fight
for.

The main classroom that survives today in Hitchin was built in 1837
- yes, there was just one
classroom for 300 boys (girls were taught seperately in another
part of the building). It wasn't even that big - about the size of
an average assembly hall nowadays, so conditions were a little
cramped. The picture at the top of this page shows a similar
classroom at a school in London. There was only one teacher, so how
did he manage to teach so many boys of different ages and
abilities? The answer is, he didn't. Instead he would teach each
lesson to about 30 of the brightest children in the school. Each of
these pupils, known as "monitors", was then responsible for
teaching a group of 10 other boys. The group would stand in a
semi-circle around the monitor, facing one of the teaching boards
that were hung around the walls of the room.

A lot of the maths they learned was basic arithmetic and
calculations involving money, which in those days was all in pounds
(£), shillings (s), pence (d) and farthings (1/4).
Unlike today's simple system of 100 pennies in a pound, adding or
subtracting sums of money involved a bit more thinking back then.
First of all children would have to memorise the rules for how many
pennies were in a shilling, how many shillings in a pound and so
on. They did this by reciting them out loud over and over again.
Here are the rules - read them aloud 10 times and see if you can
remember them without looking:

There are 4 farthings in a penny
There are 12 pennies in a shilling
There are 20 shillings in a pound
There are 21 shillings in a guinea

After spending quite a lot of time learning this, they would move
on to some addition problems. The problem would be written up on
the board around the classroom, and in their groups the children
would read it out loud several times. Here's an example of a
typical addition sum:
It certainly makes you think about the process of addition when
you're no longer dealing with tens, hundreds and units. Have a go
before scrolling down to check your answer.......

The answer to this one is £8.10s.3d and 3 farthings. Not
as easy as it looks, is it? Of course Victorian children weren't
expected to be able to just work out sums like this without lots of
practice. The monitors would show them how to solve it, and then
make them repeat the same problem out loud over and over again
until they had completely memorised it. Then they would return to
their seats to write it down. They didn't use paper in those days
because it was very expensive. Instead pupils wrote on pieces of
slate, or in sand trays using sticks. Once they had copied down the
question and written out the correct answer the monitor would check
it and only then would they move on to the next question. Sounds
tedious? It certainly was compared to the fun you can have with
maths in school nowadays!

A typical slate showing a pupil's attempt at
an addition problem. Can you spot the mistake?

School wasn't just boring and repetitive in the 19th century, it
was strict as well. If you didn't behave yourself you were in big
trouble. You might have to sit in a corner wearing a pointed
dunce's hat if you gave a wrong answer, or sit with a wooden rod up
your back if you were slouching. Worse still, if you misbehaved you
could be beaten with a cane or hit across the knuckles with a
ruler. On the plus side, children were rewarded for hard work and
good behaviour with certificates and prizes such as toys that they
couldn't have afforded themselves. Poor children lived in extremely
harsh conditions, so a new ball or a hoop was a real treat worth
working hard for in class.

The girls learned maths as well, but they also had to learn
domestic skills. Some of these wouldn't have been thought of as
mathematical back then but they actually involved some quite tricky
sums. Girls were expected to learn to cook and to work out exactly
how much sugar, flour, eggs etc were needed by calculating with
weights and measures. They learned to make clothes by drawing,
cutting and sewing elaborate patterns, and they had to know how to
run a household on a very tight budget. Nobody would have called it
maths at the time, but these were basic mathematical skills that
were essential for survival (and are still quite handy for both
girls and boys today).

Maths in Victorian schools was meant to prepare people for real
life situations, usually involving money. There were no calculators
in those days, and although children learned how to use an abacus,
most calculations were done mentally or on paper. Here are some
genuine examples of Victorian maths questions, why not have a go at
them (answers are at the bottom of the page)? Don't forget the
rules about pounds, shillings and pence.

1. A gentleman left his eldest daughter £1500 more than
the youngest, and her fortune was 11 thousand pounds, 11 hundred
pounds and £11; what is the eldest sister's fortune and
how much did the father leave them in total?

2. A man lent his friend at different times these several sums:
£63, £25.15s, £32.7s,
£15.14s.10d, and four score and nineteen pounds, half a
guinea, and a shilling. How much did he lend in all? (One 'score' =
20)

Images
courtesy of the British Schools Museum, Hitchin

These pictures show the smaller "galleried" classroom that was
added to the school in Hitchin in 1853. Over 100 pupils were
crammed into this room and you can see a dunce's hat at the front
as well as the abacus behind the teacher's desk.

The NRICH Project aims to enrich the mathematical experiences of all learners. To support this aim, members of the
NRICH team work in a wide range of capacities, including providing professional development for teachers wishing to
embed rich mathematical tasks into everyday classroom practice.